Easy as Pie

Sunday, January 22, 2012

So, one of the best gifts I got this Christmas was from my mom—she is the best gift buyer. I didn’t ask for it, didn’t need it, probably wouldn’t have bought it for myself… But it’s SO fun and I’m so glad I have it!

It’s the Bella Pie Maker sold at William-Sonoma. It makes cute, little mini-pies in 10 minutes or less. I tried it out for the first time last week and here it comes… My official endorsement.

It was Sunday night and I was looking for an easy dinner option… And while I do enjoy the baking process, that night I was looking for something fast and easy. So I grabbed a box of pie crust, a can of mixed veggies, a can of cream of chicken soup, and some chicken breast.

This is what it looked like… Gross, right? Don’t worry, it gets better.

Using the pie cutters that come with the pie maker, I cut out eight circles from the pie crust {The ones that go on the bottom are larger than the ones on top—you have to roll it out a bit flatter, but you can get 8 circles from the crust. I too was surprised…}.

After laying the bottom crusts on their slots, I spooned in the chicken mixture, laid the top crusts on top, and sealed the lid shut

The pie maker is about the size of an old school waffle iron, and like a waffle iron there’s no timer or on/off switch. You plug it in and let it heat up until the light turns green.

The ones on the left clearly baked correctly…the ones on the right were a bit of a flop. Bad case of user error—I didn’t spoon enough filling into those, so the tops didn’t touch the ceiling of the pie maker. The user guide warned me…

So I did this and hoped gravity would help me out…

Which it did. It worked well enough because dinner was great—mini pot pies served over rice, baked in 8 minutes! They were so good! And we may or may not have made pies for dessert…

They were good but they didn’t quite look like this… I guess I’ll just have to keep trying!

In terms of portion, one pie is a generous serving for a dessert because they’re fairly deep. Dinner is a little trickier—one wasn’t quite enough for me, but two was a little too much {though two is probably perfect for a dude.}…so of course, I ate both of mine.

All in all, this is very much a gadget—not a necessity, just something fun for the kitchen to mix up your baking! {And it’s currently on sale at William-Sonoma…} Maybe I’ll try to get creative and make something cute and fun like this…